The fourteen-hour flight from Melbourne to L.A. had its moments. It felt like United Airlines had merged with Westinghouse and decided to evaluate some refrigerator and aviation technology simultaneously. Efficient for the company no doubt but not great for shivering passengers. Two meals were served, with not much in between. The plane was, however, modern and the seats pretty roomy.

In order to try to catch some sleep, I took two travel pills designed to induce a serious state of drowsiness. However, the actual effect was that I was too tired to do anything interesting or productive, but not tired enough to sleep.

I now have a pretty good idea what the living dead feel like. You know, the zombies that just seem to be unreasonably irritable all the time. Poor guys and gals, I’m going to be much more sympathetic to them next time I see them attack humans.

We arrived at about seven am to a cloudy and smoggy L.A. skyline. The new international terminal (Tom Bradley) is a beauty and a huge improvement for incoming passengers. Clearing customs and collecting our bags were quite simple. We had a quick breakfast at the terminal before boarding a shuttle bus to our Hertz rental outlet. There was a decent wait to get the car keys and then to be checked out of the large parking lot but finally were on our way, heading South for a little over two hours to San Diego.

The only stop planned was for activation of my US cell phone and a healthy food and coffee break and we achieved this at Oceanside after ninety minutes on the extremely busy I-405. Oceanside is right on the Pacific Ocean (as you would expect from its nomenclature). The T-mobile shop was pretty busy. The phone plan I had last year and the plans on the Telco’s website did not seem to be available but I got the best one for a casual visit, though I’m not sure what the features really are – I’ll find out I guess.

Our hotel in San Diego was easier to find than somewhere to park our car within a reasonable distance from it.

Accommodation in San Diego is expensive. Our digs, the West Park Inn, has the advantage of being not super expensive and was close to Balboa Park which contains the San Diego Zoo (our destination tomorrow and the main reason we were there). It also had a nice central landscape area. The rooms were cosy and a little dated, but would do us three tired travellers just fine.

A quick down time before meeting in the lobby for our dinner. We all had a hankering for Mexican cuisine, given we were only seventeen miles from the Mexico border. We eventually found our way (downhill on foot) to the historic Gaslamp Quarter and Los Panchos, a classic Mexican eatery and tequila bar. The music was loud, as was the decor. The beers and margaritas went down a treat. A bottle of red wine and the chicken speciality delightful.

We trudged our way back up the hill and crashed.

Mission accomplished. We were here and set up for our trip to the Zoo tomorrow. Bring it on!